You only have to look at a great design to know…

On By cjx07sterIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

so many times i get caught up in meetings and committees that hope to design without getting fingers burnt or hands muddy. Its as though pure thought on the right side of the brain can accomplish what God knew that could not. We have two sides of the brain, and in design we need to use both… don’t you think ?

Right, think of the Condor, I saw a few a couple of days back, and having read about them with static pictures in books, encyclopaedias, google etc… you get an idea. Not so bad, lots of nice words, a couple of photos, but there is nothing like seeing one, with its condor brain at work, flying, floating, a marvel in design, able to just work the air currents to its advantage… it’s acceleration and determination of eye so brilliant a design, and yet so close to extinction as well. I wonder what the bird thinks bout it all. But look I say, how much effort would it be to describe the requirements of design of a condor….

We used to have a joke at home… i dont know where i first heard it but it was God rolling out tubes of clay, saying, “These Earth Worms are Easy”.. and that is somewhat relevant to this post. Because intuitively we see a condor and we know its capacity, we see an earthworm and we know without reading its capacity, and we see any animal and we see a great design..

So when we want to innovate and describe somethinig knew and great, think about describing it in animal terms, or in terms that call to mind those great designs around us.

Redwood Trees Jade Rocks – the Condor and the Chipmunk

On By cjx07sterIn TravelLeave a comment

You really don’t worry too much about the weather when you only have a weekend do you ?  You just get in the car and drive, dont take much food really, a bottle of water, a leather coat, a camera – phone and a couple of key numbers.

 I started out that Saturday in a hotel in downtown San Jose.  I didnt get a lot of sleep, a domestic in the hotel room two doors down. The fight was colorful, and violent, with the boyfriend, the girlfriend, the friends of the guy, and the bitch inside, with bits of smashed plates littering the corridor, and piled up against the door.. tomato sauce spots, like animals had been searching for food scraps, but not blood at least..

The coast road route one, is perched halfway up cliffs winding south down through redwoods, and along the steep face of mountains highly indignant of the push of the pacific ocean plate, and rising up over it all, with the waves crashing politely down below, accross bridges and gullies with numerous turnarounds to take photos, and listen to the sounds of it all, in the quiet.  You have the sounds of the waves below, periodic in their motion, coupled with the sounds of cars passing by, with the odd car door shutting, and foreign voices muttering, about the cold and the bleak grey fog which comes in from the ocean.  You travel down and see that many have been here before, with names carved in seats, and bridges built during the 30s, to allow the road to continue south through and past Big Sur, and down through the county into SLO county beyond.

Living in Big Sur, some of the great thinkers and writers, people who came to think.  Henry Miller came to Big Sur to settle down and write, along with poet friends, and others who needed the environment to help them sort things out.  At least that’s the impression on me, just spending a day there. The giantess of the redwood trees and the rocks and things, that pass by as you drive.  I stopped a limited number of times, I know, that it was somewhat less than 82 times, because that was the number of pictures or video snaps I captured along the way.

A sense of huge forces then, shaping the earth on the edge of the pacific, and solid rock with jade poking through in Big Sur, and giant rocks and stones tumbling down into the water below. Beware the rocks my son, which gyre and gimbal in the waves.  The green Jade rock of metaphysics, which allows worries to be absorbed, must surely have assisted having past so many tons of Big Sur and the central coast, just feet away from the car.  Jade stones and salt water, the cure for all worries in metaphysical stone theory, I have  it on good advice.

Those things we do with video cameras to make life interesting, we worry about Zoom and Pan, and now worry free, I set the camera on the tripod on the stones, for which only an earth tremor would move.  For now I would set my Flip camera up on it’s red Eddie Bauer tripod, and just turn it on.  Hoping to extend the moment of the picture, with infinitesmal movement in the sky and in the grasses that moved in the foreground with the breeze.  Suddenly among the Jade and color of the blue ocean and the grey sky floated a condor, that rare californian bird of prey, so majesticly soaring.  It crossed the corner frame of the still camera, just in an instant captured, and then past.  The scene returned to normal.  I ran for the camera, grabbed it, and then with tripod in hand started tracking the condor as it floated past on the cliff face below.  Then it circled back, looking for something, and flying very close to the turnaround at the top of the cliff and road level, and accross the frame, about 20 feet in front.  Its wingtip feathers perfectly in control of its effortless flight.  It was looking for something near my feet, its head watching while soaring, and heading toward me.  Flashing through my mind, the injunction – don’t get closer than 150 feet to a condor – and here it was coming from left front to right back.  In the end it was too fast and flew right past the camera and down the cliff and out of sight. 

Quiet resumed, a chipmunk darted out of the grasses into the turnaround.  He was looking for tourist food or scraps, and then was chased back by a rather large seagull.  The drama over, there were no plates broken, no life lost, no one ate anything, no tomato sauce, and life returned to the quiet steady roll of the waves far below and a car or two passing occasionally. The man, the chipmunk, the seagull, and the condor, none of them worried, among the jade and redwood of the cliffs on the coast road at Big Sur.

See Saw Marjery Daw

On By cjx07sterIn TravelLeave a comment

This story is about how people meet, and discover and bounce off each other, each on their own way to somewhere in life. Happens a lot when people travel, this kind of thing don’t you think ?

His speed and risk taking had been no bother to other drivers, he really enjoyed life, and loved pushing the limits, almost testing life to see how it might end, even at the end of a working day.  There would always be tomorrow to try it again. So gunning the car into the drive, found a park, turned off the radio, got out, slammed the door, opened the back, got laptop, slammed other door, pip-pip’ed the car lock, walked into the hotel portico, through the auto doors, out of the sun, and into the cool of the lobby run.

Tired of thinking.  Past desk. Press button. Up elevator. Into room, change clothes, get down to the spa… sit on the edge. How brilliant, how frustrating the second last day, at the office by the bay.  Tomorrow at least he would check out and be on his way elsewhere.

The spa was quiet the water was ripply with the sun, in sunset over the fence and the parking lot beyond.  The fence now enclosing them in a pool bbq area.  She smoked and had a cup by her side.  Not dressed for the pool, but like she should have been, with her smile and look and now a question parted her lips in his direction.  She had on a nice shirt, shorts, but maybe looking for peace and quiet to chill for the evening. They were doing the same now, sitting on the other side,. her with her bare feet and red toenails waving under the surface of the still warm spa, in shorts and T-shirt, with book, and drink beside. Him, his legs, poking out of silly shorts with business shirt and strange fast social habits, and mobile phone besides.

Clock ticking, heart beating, what do they say ? what do they say ?  see-saw marjorie daw.. tick tick tick…boom boom boom … tick tick …

He took a breath, then another one, staring down into the spa pool. After the day had begun and ending, he thought it might be nice to just be quiet and relax a bit, however the presence of another there messed him around and made him tense. His mind constantly on the next task, the next job in life.  He ran a race, constantly in motion, against himself.  Whenever faced with an opportunity to connect to another, he tried to fit it into his task oriented life… perhaps he might spend half an hour playing with the person on the other end of the see saw in the spa.

Yet there she was, having hoped to say goodbye to the cruel world quietly, goodbye to the silly job she had for thirty years, and goodbye to other things as well.  She had come down to the spa pool, in the nearing darkness, having checked into a hotel, far out of the way of others, with a cup of wine, and a smoke, and a determination to just chill.

“What are you reading”  He asked

“Oh, just filling in time”.  She told him,

“I’m an engineer” He said,

“Me too”, She said,

“Long day” He said,

“Right, and not over yet” She said,

“ok”

“ok”

“Wrong, it’s over for me at least” He said,

“Short day really”, She said,

“You look like you are taking it pretty easy ?”, he asked,

“they don’t like me drinking here in the pool area”, she brandished the blue paper coffee cup as if she had fooled them for at least one more evening.

“My name is Fernando”, he said.

“Christine”, she said, “would you like a beverage ?” she asked. She got up, and dried her legs a bit, setting off to the hotel lobby.

It was getting dark and the light was far less when Christine returned, and this time with two paper cups of wine.

The evening wore on, the more Ferdinand talked with Christine, and the darker it got, the light and the conversation both.  The darkening and the wine brought with it an edge to the conversation, gradually developing to one of individual fears and tragedy, bad break ups, sadness, stories, and still with the sparring of bare feet together under the water. Christine, about having to stop, and take measure of life, about having a vacation, what is a vacation, why keep working, why not go to the continent, and meet someone handsome to lie around with for a while, and sit in sleepy cafes on the boulevardes of Paris or the vias of Roma. Ferdinand about stuff he had no idea about, feeling more and more out of depth.  The conversation was not the usual see-saw, but had become a slippery slide, down into the depths of a soul, down into the tragedy of the other. He did not know how to pull out, how to just lightly say good bye, nice to meet you etc etc, how to say, why not just come up to his room, and have some adult fun perhaps.

It was Christine who decided that enough was enough, there was in her meeting with Ferdinand a kind of tilting in two dimensions at once.  On the one hand, she had gone to the pool, to wait for the moment, when she would return to her room, her departure from the world intended, but now she was no longer sure about that.

It was Ferdinand, who woke the next morning, dressed for the day, down the elevator, into the lobby, laptop in hand, and blackberry buzzing, who grabbed a paper, and looked around, to see Christine again, at breakfast….and expecting to see Christine at breakfast, found no trace, although he had dreamt that she had promised to be around.

QiJi – Nice clear Water into Wine for Guests

On By cjx07sterIn Existentialism, Miracle, Sunday Posts, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I would have gone cycling through the dark universe of the creator with compass.  The dividers which divided left from right up from down, cartesian and rotational thinking for all.  I would have rung my bell as I passed back in time to its dim small beginning.  I turn my wheel and precess my gyro force along lines of pure particles trapped in quantum traces through the mind of our creator.  I know now how miracles happen, those event threads which do not make sense in the causal sphere we live in.  The rational line that allows one thing to depend on a prior thing.  A miracle starts by deleting or creating an event thread and its rational cause erased by the hand of God as and when someone might entreat him.  How simple it is to just park the bike with the bell inside the compass drawn night, and turn off the bike light and listen to the noise of the background dark energy, and pray that something good can occur when normal causality, reality, and rational thought deems it impossible.  Then all of an instant, the hand of the almighty reaches back in time, rolling up the fly thread on his rod and reel and flicks the key events which might shape the present and makes change what is to what was to be.

At the marriage feast at Cana, there were people in a passion play, needing wine for the guests to follow, and deleting the water thread and replacing it with wine, what other impacts were caused, were not elaborated.